Slipping on numbers? Experts suggest how to get over maths phobia

It’s an all too familiar fear among students, who are often pressured by parents to score high percentages. A 2021 survey conducted by Cuemath, an after-school live-class platform in maths, found that 82 per cent of students from Classes VII to X are fearful of the subject.

Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash, who is known as the world’s fastest human calculator, conducted maths classes in 23 countries under the banner Exploring Infinities’. He found three out of every five children were fearful of maths. “The reason why maths phobia exists at a global level is because it is never really taught contextually,” he tells Business Standard.

When anxiety turns into phobia

“In Class VII, a night before a maths test, my father was teaching me decimals, and he scolded me so much because I couldn’t understand basics and I cried repeatedly,” recalls Soumya Sourav Das, a corporate professional. “The fear seeped into my conscience and I couldn’t sleep the night before any maths exam in school after that,” Das adds.

How can the problem be solved? Teachers can make all the difference in how a child perceives maths throughout academic life and after. “There should be greater cognitive efforts on the part of students, at Cuemath we call it ‘high ratio’ where students interact and put more effort into learning than teachers explaining,” says Manan Khurma, founder and CEO at Cuemath.

This approach not only helps alleviate anxiety but also enhances students’ problem-solving skills, critical thinking abilities and logical reasoning.

Numerous interactive and gamified educational platforms have emerged, providing students with a fun and engaging way to learn maths.

Exams, competitions and learning are three motivators behind actively engaging in any academic session. But to combat phobia, maths needs to be looked at as a game or sport. For someone who picked up an interest in mathematics through puzzles at a time he was bedridden at home, Bhanu says, “Every parent has to talk about maths not as a challenge for exams but something that goes beyond that.”

When mathematics is taught like a mental sport, it builds creative thinking and problem-solving skills in children. Such cognitive skill development helps children with: paying more attention to detail, accuracy, and precision (helps in STEM learning); improving processing speed and classification of information; enhanced memory (visual, spatial, working); and inducing divergent thinking, says Bhanu.

Increased awareness, teacher training programmes and ongoing research into effective interventions are crucial for continued improvement of mathematics education. Through innovative teaching strategies, integration of technology, and a supportive learning environment, educators and researchers are actively working to alleviate this anxiety and promote maths literacy.